[BITList] The Fallen Status of Books

[John Feltham]

The Fallen Status of Books
Hard times for hardcovers.
By Jack Shafer in SLATE
Posted Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010, at 5:58 PM ET

Have books lost their appeal?
No greater pride befalls a scholar, a thinker, a journalist, a business 
executive, or other writer than to have a party thrown in honor of the 
publication of his book. A book party is like a wedding, a birthday party, a 
baptism, a prom, a class reunion, and a bar mitzvah all rolled up into one. 
For authorial self-esteem, the only things that can possibly top a book 
party are a book reading that's videotaped and broadcast by C-SPAN or a 
Charlie Rose interview.

Although publishing a book still brings bliss to authors, the glow derived 
from books has dimmed for former bibliophiles like me. Once I loved books. I 
worshipped books. I built defensive perimeters around my desk and bed and 
stereo and hallways with huge stacks of them. When my friends published 
their books, I steeped in jealousy while congratulating them on their 
accomplishment. When acquaintances asked when I was going to write a book, I 
told them I had once pitched a book proposal about the rise of clandestinely 
manufactured illicit drugs based on this 1985 magazine piece but that 
publishers had wisely rejected it.
To sublimate the envy I had for my book-writing friends, I took to throwing 
book parties for them. I still throw the occasional book party, but my envy 
has subsided because my adoration of books has faded. It's not that books 
are any better or any worse than they once were. It's just that they've lost 
their primacy in my world.
And not just my world. Not that long ago, a free-standing Sunday book-review 
section was essential to the status of a daily newspaper. But in the past 
decade, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and 
the San Francisco Chronicle have all said to hell with books and shed their 
standalone sections. The surviving newspaper book section, the New York 
Times Book Review, has seen better days. It could hit 80 pages in the 1970s. 
Last Sunday it clocked in at only 28 pages. Today brings a report from the 
New York Observer that Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal plans to start a 
free-standing book review in coming weeks. But that doesn't subtract from my 
thesis. Murdoch's decision to add a book section to the Journal isn't really 
about pleasing readers, it's about rumbling with the New York Times, which 
he's vowed to destroy by mirroring its coverage of politics, culture, 
sports, spot news, books, and New York City. The section isn't good news for 
books. It's bad news for Murdoch.
Journalists especially have lusted to write books because publishing one 
validated their careers by announcing to one and all-especially to their 
easy-to-impress bosses-that they were no dime-a-word hack. This contribution 
to arts and letters didn't start rotting the minute it rolled off the press. 
This contribution was timeless!

In 2009, Jack Shafer predicted that the book industry would get Napstered 
and wrote that the iPad and tablets like it wouldn't save newspapers and 
magazine. In 2003, Meghan O'Rourke lauded the glory years of the New York 
Times Book Review. In 1998, Jacob Weisberg ripped the Book Review.
And it sort of was. If a curious individual wanted to learn more about 
Subject A or Subject B, an encyclopedia, a library, or a book store were the 
best places to acquire that knowledge. But today, if I decide I want to know 
more about, say, gossip columnist Walter Winchell, do I really need to track 
down a copy of Neal Gabler's excellent Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the 
Culture of Celebrity? Or can I sate my hunger with the Wikipedia entry, a 
quick Google search of his name, by using Amazon's "click to look inside!" 
feature, or searching Google Books to glean enough information? My guess is 
that in most cases, readers can. They don't need to buy the entire menu when 
they can shop a la carte.
If I'm right about the status of books being in decline, book publishers 
have yet to feel the real pain. In 2009, sales dropped only 1.8 percent. But 
there are other measures, most of them anecdotal. Just a decade ago, I 
hoarded all of my books, refusing to sell them or give them away, because I 
didn't want to gamble that I wouldn't need them on short notice again. 
Finding a used, out-of-print, or rare book before AbeBooks, Alibris, and 
Amazon arrived was an expensive pain. You either had to prowl used 
bookstores, find a library with the title, or pay a stiff book-finders' fee. 
Now, thanks to resellers, I gladly purge my library now and again to make 
space. If I ever need a copy of Drudge Manifesto again, I'll be able to get 
it on the Web for a penny, plus shipping. A back of the envelope calculation 
reveals to me that the replacement price of the average volume in my 
personal library has dropped 20 percent to 40 percent in the Web era. So 
even if the status of books isn't falling, the value of them is.
By making books commodities, the modern market has stripped them of much of 
their romantic charm. I like the smell of a moldy book as much as the next 
bibliophile, but not as much as I once did. And while I've yet to purchase a 
Kindle or iPad, which make buying books in a store or online seem like hard 
work, I keep some titles on my netbook and iPod and can see myself making a 
fuller transition to e-books. And as I do, I'll become even less romantic 
about books-just as I became progressively less romantic about music as my 
collection has shifted from vinyl to CDs to mp3s. Holding an LP cover or 
even a CD jacket used to anchor the listener to something corporeal. But not 
anymore. The same is happening to books. The ancient ceremony of reading by 
turning its pages being disrupted by the e-book's clicks and swipes. In the 
process it distances us from the old magic conjured by books. Books are 
being replaced by reading.
Newspapers experienced a similar reckoning in the past decade when they 
stopped assigning the old status upon their readers. Personal data point: 
When I edited the alternative weekly Washington City Paper from 1985 to 
1995, one of the paper's owners loved to point out how everybody who picked 
it up usually carried it so that the nameplate was visible. They wanted 
others to see that they were a City Paper person! But those days have 
passed. Beyond serving as a marker to your boss that you're a serious 
person, your subscription to the Wall Street Journal doesn't say much about 
you these days. Well, it does say that you're old. Barnes & Noble and 
Borders have gotten the message that books are becoming passé, moving them 
out to make room for toys, stationery, and other merchandise. At Barnes & 
Noble, a kiosk pushing Nook e-book readers greets you as you enter the 
store.
There are still reasons to write books, of course. It's still an achievement 
to write one-even a bad one. Also, a book can still give an author control 
over what's said and how it's received in a way that rivals other mediums. 
If written expertly, a book can signal to the reader a seriousness and 
erudition that doesn't apply to every Web page or every newspaper. And 
sometimes an author's labors can generate returns beyond the minimum wage.
But those reasons apply equally to e-books and hardcovers. Which brings me 
to my ultimate observation about the fallen status of books: Can you imagine 
throwing a book party for a friend who wrote an e-book? As attendees bought 
the e-book, what would the author do to personalize and commemorate the 
event? Sign their Kindles?



------------------------------------